i was listenin'/to the rain/i was hearin'/somethin' else

Last night there was a moment when everyone had scattered and I was on my own to drink and look around. We were at a bar that was pretending it was 1958, if you could overlook the lip rings and pierced noses, and I had just turned in an empty beer bottle for a ceramic glass decorated with a ceramic pirate and a paper umbrella garnish. It was a soda shop for the nearly thirty; the bar with leopard skin stools and the red leather booths against the wall, a back room with a band and a pinball machine twisted into a corner where only the player could fit as he played and anyone watching would keep arching and squeezing, "Sorry, man," "My fault, man," "You're fine, you're fine". There was a dj with a broken arm playing a single turntable
 like a jukebox on free play and sometimes it would be right in phase with the band in the back room and sometimes it wouldn't and sometimes the band wouldn't play at all. It was in the middle of one of the band's breaks when the dj chose to play "I Only Have Eyes For You". I turned with the glittering crystal sound of the shoobydoobydoowaaa and leaning into the booth that was just in front of me was a woman with thick Betty Page hair, too black to be from anywhere but a bottle, her lipstick a shiny Chevrolet red, her dress white with tiny polka dots and screeching to a halt well above the middle of her thighs. She was one even line from top to bottom, a fine curve, a new drag strip that the cops haven't found yet. There was nothing you could call a neckline, but the highest ruffle of her dress was low and split open for attention and to make it clear that underneath was as little as she could get away with, if that. She was talking to a fat man in expensive shoes with a thrift store shirt and tie and his lady, a woman who had women tattooed on her arm. She didn't have glasses on but she seemed like the type who might, like a low budget superman with a secret identity that washed down the drain a half hour after last call and stood in the train on Monday with no one even looking twice. She had no earrings, which was almost spectacularly violating in a place like this. She was very friendly to the people near her and as she finished her drink she took the paper umbrella and put it in her hair, right beside two others. She had on red heels and was balancing on only one of them while she ate her cherry in four bites, like she knew someone somewhere was watching her and deserved a reward. She never once looked left or right and when she finally went back to two feet the song came to a close. There was a little quiet and I heard her laughing. It sounded just like anybody else's laugh so I picked up my phone.